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How Can You Renegotiate Founder Equity?
“I want to cut the equity of my co-founder from 45 percent to twenty percent,” “Oren” said to me. “He’s not performing very well. What do you think?” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “I don’t think that’s going to go over very well,” I said. “You certainly…
Read MoreWhy Investors Say No To Entrepreneurs?
100 to one. Burn that ratio into your brain. That’s the number of face to face meetings a typical venture capital firm will have for every one startup they invest in. How do I know this? I was an Entrepreneur in Residence with a major VC fund in San Francisco. Raising your startup funding isn’t…
Read MoreHow Can A New Business Process Save Your Company?
“’Bob’ wants to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic,” I said to Steve, my right hand man. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “What did Bob do?” Steve asked. “Well, you know we missed our number for the quarter,” I said, referring to the company missing its financial…
Read MoreWhat Are The Rules For Selling Your Startup?
“There’s a company in our portfolio, I can’t say who, where the founders decided to sell to Microsoft,” one of my investors, Gill, said to me. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “Congratulations,” I said. “Well, they decided to sell a little earlier then I would have preferred,…
Read MoreHow Do You Determine Your Total Available Market?
Understanding how big your total available market is a critical step in building your startup, and understanding your TAM is a critical slide when you’re fundraising. Yet most entrepreneurs get their total available market slide wrong. Part of the problem is should you present your TAM or your SAM? Or, maybe you should you present…
Read MoreHow Do You Buy Out Your Co-Founder?
I had four co-founders. I had to fire one of my co-founders within six months of us being operational. This was six months before we had any revenue. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. The negotiation of “Randy’s” exit was simple. It took less than one hour to complete.…
Read MoreHow Often Should You Call A Big Potential Customer?
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was from a mentor I had named Lew. Lew was an old school sales guy, trained by the legendary Don Valentine at Fairchild Semiconductor back in the day. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. After working at Fairchild,…
Read MoreHow Do You Value Your Startup?
There’s a lot of advice for entrepreneurs on how do you value your startup. Unfortunately, most of the startup advice is wrong. The goal of today’s video is to give you a simple methodology for valuing your startup; especially if your company is an early stage startup. We’ll look at how you answer investors questions…
Read MoreWhat Should You Do When You’re Burned Out?
I remember the moment clearly. We had finally gotten to $100K per month in revenue. This should have been a moment of celebration because $100K per month is when you’ve hit escape velocity. If you just keep at it, you’ll be at $1 million per month in no time flat. [Do you want to grow…
Read MoreHow Do You Recruit Your Startup Team?
Years ago, I was in a meeting with Jack Gifford, the founding CEO of Maxim Integrated Products. Maxim’s revenue was around $1 billion per year at the time. Also in the meeting was “Peter”, one of the best engineering managers in the company. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click…
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